Cons

Bottom Line

If you’re in the market for a reliable and a highly-functional smartphone which doesn’t blow a hole in your pocket, the Redmi Note 6 Pro is an excellent choice

Nov. 22, 2018Sahil Mohan Gupta

When you’re designing the successor to the best selling smartphone in India, the task at hand, for an encore, is Herculean. Imagine, you start bootstrapped — keeping it gated to an affordable price point — from then on you try to improve every aspect of the phone. That’s the task Xiaomi had as it went about with designing the successor to the Redmi Note 5 Pro. And within 10 months Xiaomi is back with the Redmi Note 6 Pro. Let’s see if it can make a kill with this one too.

What’s great

There is a lot to like about the Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro. Xiaomi has improved almost everything about the phone without sacrificing anything. It starts right from the build quality. This time around Xiaomi is publicly acknowledging the fact that the Redmi Note 6 Pro is made out of series 6000 aluminium, something that Apple used for phones like the iPhone 5s. Suffices to say, the grade of construction has gone up. More so, Xiaomi has also added splash protection to the phone with a nano-coating which will be protecting it from intermittent showers, accidental spills and what not, but yeah, you still can’t take your Redmi Note for a swim.

Design wise, it looks very similar to the Redmi Note 5 Pro from the back and the sides. However, they have curved the edges ever so slightly further and have even made the edges more rounded which makes this a very ergonomic phone to hold. From the front, it is a completely different story altogether. You get a brand new notch-style screen which has a radius of 6.28-inches, much like the Poco F1.

The notch is also a big one as it incorporates a dual front camera system, a bevvy of sensors and a microphone. The garish notch aside, the phone has a great screen which is full of lush colours, good 500 nits of brightness and good levels of sharpness thanks to its full HD + screen resolution.

Performance is actually superb on this phone. Yes, it runs the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor in-tandem with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage, but Mi UI 10 is a game changer. Animations are faster, transitions have been smoothened and the UX has been cleaned up. It also works better with iPhone X-style gestures and comes replete with a new multitasking system. One can also download the Poco launcher in case a Pixel-like launcher experience is preferred. It works well with the Mi UI.

For day to day usage, it is great. You can have multiple apps running like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, YouTube and Apple Music apart from the web browser and you’ll find the functioning of the phone to be efficient. It works superbly for basic tasks and really, as a secondary and as a work phone, it will be amazing.

Even as your main phone, it has the chops for day to days tasks. Its gaming and imaging capability give it more credence in this regard. It has handled PUBG on medium settings for long hours with few framerate glitches and not much heating. At higher settings, it struggles but that’s par for the course as this is a mid-range phone.

In the imaging department, Xiaomi is starting to show-off. You get a 12-megapixel camera on the back coupled with a 5-megapixel one. Obviously, most people will think this is the same camera system as the previous Redmi Note 5 Pro, but this is actually a new sensor. It is a bigger sensor with bigger 1.4-micron pixels replete with a wider aperture centred at f/1.9.

And the improvements show in the photos I captured while testing the phone. Autofocus is lightning fast, and generally, performance across the board is consistently good, giving the likes of the OnePlus 6T a run for its money. More so, the low light performance takes a huge leap forward making this phone’s camera a very usable low light camera, something one only expects of flagship phones.

For all kinds of shots, be it macro, landscape or general portrait imaging, this is a great camera to use. The portrait mode has some improvements in addition to the general image quality enhancements thanks to Mi UI 10. Like the Google Pixel 3, now you can adjust the level of depth in post which is a cool option to have. Xiaomi goes one step further by adding customised bokeh effects which can also be altered once the photo has been taken in addition to having stage lighting effects that work surprisingly well.

Xiaomi’s front-facing camera is arguably even better. It has a really good 20-megapixel camera which is combined with a 2-megapixel depth sensor. This means generally good to great selfies even in low light and also superb portrait selfies that could eclipse a 40k phone like the OnePlus 6T.

You’re getting a phone that’s 4G LTE compliant on both SIMs and while using those two SIMs you can also expand the storage of the phone — yep thoughtful and super useful. This doesn’t get old.

Xiaomi also has developed a reliable face-unlock which works well in tandem with the fingerprint scanner on the back.

Last, but not the least, is the battery life of this phone. In one adjective — it’s amazing. You easily get a day and a half worth of juice in one go. With medium usage on a single charge — you’re talking about 24 hours of usage thanks to its humungous 4,000mAh battery which is now being offered in a slimmer host than before.

What’s boring

The truth is that there is not much wrong with this phone. But the fact that the phone is more of a refinement of the Redmi Note 5 Pro rather than being a complete overhaul is a little perturbing. At the end of the day a lot of the features that the Redmi Note 6 Pro are software-based and can be potentially brought to the Redmi Note 5 Pro without much hassle.

One would’ve certainly liked a newer, faster chipset at the heart of the Redmi Note 6 Pro - something like a Snapdragon 660 or 710 would’ve really made a huge difference to the shelf life of the phone. It would’ve also improved the gaming experience of the phone.

More so, Xiaomi’s track record with software updates isn’t great. Yes, they do provide features even before Google dreams them up for Android, but the fact is usually that you’re left on an older version of Android for long periods when you buy Xiaomi’s devices and that leaves you vulnerable from a security standpoint.

Moreover, when an update eventually arrives there are compatibility issues with Xiaomi’s themes which is one of the allures when it comes to buying something with the Mi UI. Couple all of this with the fact, there are a bunch of preloaded apps and some ads running inside Xiaomi’s built-in experience, everything isn’t hunky-dory from a software perspective.

The battery is a huge strength but because Xiaomi still sticks to older microUSB charging, you’re not getting the fastest charging phone even with a 10VA charger. This phone takes more than an hour and a half to achieve full charge which will be a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Design wise too, this is more or less the same phone — and mind you Xiaomi has been playing up this design for a while as even the Mi A2 has similar cues. It’s functional for sure, but it isn’t a head turner like some of the Honor phones doing the rounds.

Should you buy it?

Certainly if you’re in the market for a reliable and a highly-functional smartphone which doesn’t blow a hole in your pocket. At the end of the day, this remains the most rounded phone you can buy for less than Rs 20,000, yes, more so than the Mi A2 — because it has a more consistent camera, better battery life and generally a nicer display as well. Software wise it will be a split between people who like Mi UI and stock Android of course. But Mi UI has improved so much that there wouldn’t be too many people who consider it a deal breaker because of slow Android updates apart from sticklers for security.

About the Author

A fan of the iconic TV series Star Trek since childhood, Sahil Mohan Gupta, was pushed towards writing about technology because of impact of the TV show at a very young age. Sahil, who is known as Bones, in professional and social circles, has been writing about tech for more than 6 years. He has written about everything under the sun; ranging from smartphones, tablets, PCs, videos games, AI to pro audio, music, nightlife, sports and movies. Sahil has worked for some of the most prestigious media houses in India covering technology verticals and has also hosted consumer electronics shows on Indian national television. At PCMag India, he brings his ... See Full Bio